Field of the Invention
This invention relates to an improved contact center system and method for assigning individual contact processing resources of the contact center to contacts in the contact center.
Description of the Related Art
Referring to FIG. 1, contact centers 22, including traditional voice-only call centers as well as multimedia contact centers adapted to handle contacts in other media, employ numerous agents 20, 40, having various skillsets to service customers 16, 18.
The contact center of FIG. 1 is connected to the public switched telephone network (PSTN) 12 and to the Internet 14. An Internet telephony gateway 15 is provided to translate between a private branch exchange (not shown) in the contact center and the Internet 14. Alternatively, the contact center could be enabled for voice over IP (VoIP) communications, such that direct telephony communications with the Internet may be made, and in such cases, translation between the VoIP environment of the contact center and the PSTN 12 can mediated by appropriate equipment in known manner. Using the PSTN 12 and Internet 14, respectively, customers 16, 18 may connect to the contact center using conventional telephony equipment, as in the case of customer 16, or using Internet-enabled hardware or software, as in the case of customer 18 (e.g. dedicated voice or video Internet telephony equipment, or a computer with appropriate software for such telephony, or a computer with instant messaging or e-mail software).
The most common solution for handling contacts is to maintain within a queuing system 24, queues for agents (resources) 25 and queues for contacts 23 and matching contacts to agents according to priority, skillset etc.
The contact center server 22 is typically programmed with workflows 28 so that an incoming contact from a customer 16, 18, is processed in accordance with the instructions contained in a workflow 28. Typically, this may involve placing a call in a conference with an interactive voice response (IVR) server 30, which plays recorded announcements to the customer and requests inputs from the customer. These inputs are stored and used by the contact center to traverse an IVR workflow until all relevant information has been gleaned from the client, and subsequently, to place the contact in one of the queues 23. Usually, this is done by assigning the contact to one or more skillsets, each skillset being serviced by an agent or group of agents with the requisite skills to handle queries relating to that skillset.
If an agent is free, the contact can be assigned directly to an agent (by manipulation of appropriate software objects in the queues 24), with the result that the customer is placed in conference with one of the agents 20, 40, who can then deal directly with the questions or concerns of the customer. More typically, agent resources are limited and the contact is assigned to a contact skillset queue 23 along with other contacts, which are waiting for the same agent resources. The contacts are serviced according to various criteria including waiting time, priority, urgency, media type and so forth. When a contact reaches the top of a queue, it is assigned to the next available agent. During the time that a contact is in a queue, the caller will typically be placed on hold and provided with entertainment, music, announcements, advertisement or other content, represented in FIG. 1 by music-on-hold server 32. It is not unusual in such circumstances to occasionally provide the customer with an indication of the position in queue or the wait time expected until an agent is free, or to allow the customer to request such information by making appropriate key presses or speaking appropriate key words.
Separately, it is also known to provide a work assignment engine (WAE) within a contact center with a view to providing a queueless contact center. Here, contacts and agents are maintained as data objects within the contact center. The WAE constantly sweeps over the data objects allocating contacts to agents according to customer need and contact center goals.
Meeting the needs of the customers 16, 18 in a timely and efficient manner is paramount to a successful and profitable contact center and it is an object of the present invention to further optimize contact center performance.